Wednesday, October 7, 2015

The Choice We Face

A new survey indicates that the majority of people are concerned specifically about the treatment of chickens, and they don't have confidence that the meat industry will treat chickens humanely. This is an obvious "in" we can use to help the most animals possible.

Joe and crew have heard a lot of feedback on the approach taken by One Step for Animals. Not surprisingly, many people won't support harm reduction, saying instead that the message has to be compassion for all animals.

Oddly, though, a number of people have said that "stop eating chickens" is a "harder" ask than "go vegan" or "go vegetarian." This is very odd, given the logical contradiction (i.e., it is obviously easier to give up X than W, X, Y, and Z). Also, all the surveys show that it is other products that are hardest for people to give up (e.g., “Kicking dairy was brutal,” he said. “That’s like getting off OxyContin.”).

It is, of course, easy to view our vegan-only Facebook feed, and believe that veganism is exploding. Within the vegan bubble, it is easy to think we have to promote veganism, since there seems to be such a vast hunger for vegan information.

But in the real world, things aren't so rosy. Although per-capita chicken consumption in the US fell from 2006-2012, it is now on the rise again.

The choice is clear - we can stay in our vegan bubble and keep our message pure to stay popular and keep our friends happy.

Wait. I don't understand. Ask people to just give up eating chickens, and perhaps even encourage them to eat other animals instead? Are we trying to trick them into going vegan? If they replace chickens with fish or ducks or cows is that a win?